Davos Daily: Mountain fashion, IPO excitement, and 5,000 soldiers

Demonstrators have pulled out all the stops

Most Davos attendees without the luxury of a private jet will arrive at Zurich Airport, and those touching down on Monday will be reminded as they come in to land that not everyone welcomes the event.

Alongside protests in the town itself, activists on Monday unfurled a giant banner close to Zurich airport featuring the faces of Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg, captioned: "Hey Davos billionaires: Shut up and pay your taxes.

A reminder: none of the trio is on the official list.

A surprise last-minute attendee

While the Davos guest list starts coming together months ahead of time, there's always room for a few last-minute wildcards.

Frequent Trump adversary and long-rumored potential Democratic presidential candidate, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, announced plans late last week to attend, setting up a clash between him and the president in the high mountains.

"Newsom's arrival at Davos confirms his desire to be seen as the Democratic Party leader and go-to guy for world leaders wanting an alternative to President Trump," Sally Susman, a longtime democratic fundraiser, told Business Insider over the weekend.

Newsom will use Davos as a platform to argue that Trump's economic agenda has been a failure that other leaders should not be part of, a spokesperson for Newsom, Izzy Gardon, said.

Airport-style security protocols

As if to underline just how strict security arrangements are, I've just had a message from Business Insider's Aki Ito, who is on the ground in Davos.

She described being made to empty her water bottle before going through an airport-style scanner to gain entry into a venue on the Promenade, Davos' main street, and the heart of the action this week.

5,000 soldiers and antiaircraft guns

As one might imagine at a gathering of some of the most important people in global tech, finance, and politics, security is extraordinarily tight.

Around 5,000 personnel from the Swiss armed forces will be deployed each day of the conference, according to local media.

On top of that, airspace near Davos is tightly controlled during WEF week, including the deployment of antiaircraft weapons near the town.

Billionaires and CEOs are arriving by private jet

Flying commercial isn't always the best option for Davos attendees, and many are arriving by private jet.

Marc Benioff's Gulfstream G700 is one of the latest jets to touch down near the alpine resort.

The Salesforce CEO's plane flew over 14 hours from Hawaii to Friedrichshafen, Germany, according to data from JetSpy. It touched down shortly after 11 a.m. local time on Monday

It's perhaps the swankiest jet to arrive so far. The price tag for a G700 starts at $78 million.

Benioff is scheduled to speak tomorrow.

Two BlackRock-owned Gulfstream G650 jets have landed in Zurich, too, per JetSpy's tracking data.

One of them arrived on Sunday morning, followed by the other about 25 hours later. They both came from New York's Westchester County Airport.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink is also the interim co-chair of the WEF. He's due to speak tomorrow morning.

Corporate jets owned by Google, IBM, The Carlyle Group, and Eli Lilly have also landed in the region since Saturday, per JetSpy.

Airspace restrictions mean very few will land at the airport closest to Davos. Instead, most are arriving in Zurich, and some at Friedrichshafen. The German town is about 60 miles from Davos as the crow flies.

Fashion in the mountains

Just because it's cold doesn't mean you can't look good.

Kayla Peterson, director of partnerships at AI Wellness, traveled to her first Davos from Los Angeles and was dressed to impress on Monday morning.

"I feel like when you look the part, doors will open," she said, explaining why she was "stepping it up a notch."

A costly coat check

Not much in Davos is cheap, including checking your coat. Business Insider editor in chief Jamie Heller spied the price of coat check at the five-star Grandhotel Belvédère, one of Davos' hot meeting spots during WEF week, thanks to its proximity to the main convention center.

At $5 an item, it is one of the costlier cloakrooms we've seen, but don't worry, you can pay with your Amex.

Where the world's rich and powerful go, so do protesters

At any gathering of the so-called global elite, protests are pretty much inevitable, and Davos is no different.

Demonstrators gathered in the town on Sunday to oppose the event, and call for higher taxation on billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and the world's richest man, Elon Musk. While none of the trio are on the official guest list this year, Davos has long been a touchstone for protests against the superrich.

Some locals aren't fans of the disruption the WEF causes, either. Business Insider's Dan DeFrancesco spied several banners on a house close to the conference's main USA House.

One reads "The WEF is eating up our living space," while the others, well, you don't need to be fluent in Swiss German to understand them.

IPO excitement in the Alps

Will the IPO window finally open up in 2026? There's a lot of talk about some massive companies — SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic — making their public market debut this year.

Chris Taylor, NYSE's chief development officer, told me it could be a "banner year for IPOs."

Those AI and tech giants are unique in their size and name-brand recognition in a way most other private companies can't relate to. But their decision to go public could serve as a stamp of approval for smaller companies to dive in as well.

"Having a mindset change is really important," Taylor told me, and those larger companies will give the public markets a stamp of approval, he added.

So which ones will IPO this year? Taylor declined to speculate on that — I asked — but he did say he could see a domino effect among the big players once one makes the leap.

Mark your calendars for 8 a.m. ET on Wednesday

By far the most anticipated event of this year's World Economic Forum is a "special address" from President Donald Trump at 2 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

While there's no official confirmation of what Trump plans to talk about, it's likely that the ongoing saga of his desire to make Greenland part of the US will feature heavily.

Over the weekend, Trump said that from February 1, he would impose an additional 10% tariff on Denmark, which controls Greenland, as well as Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland, unless they agree to a deal to hand over Greenland to the United States.

European leaders have been unequivocal in their opposition to Trump's plan, with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Monday morning giving a nationwide address to condemn the new tariffs and defend Denmark's sovereignty over Greenland.

While Greenland seems most likely, Trump's speech may focus on something completely different, with rumors swirling in the rarified air of the Swiss Alps that he could make a major announcement during the speech.

"All we are hearing is that it's going to be BIG BIG BIG and to clear our schedules," veteran journalist Steve Clemons wrote in his "Washington Note" newsletter late on Sunday.

Spotlight on big names in business, tech, and politics

Davos kicks off in earnest this evening at around 6 p.m. local time (midday ET), with a curtain-raising concert from Grammy winner Jon Batiste, French violinist Renaud Capuçon, and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Then on Tuesday, the real action starts.

Big names from across the worlds of business, tech, and politics have been arriving in the Swiss ski town over the weekend, with more pouring in on Monday.

Figures like Bill Gates, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella, and Jensen Huang, the CEO of AI darling Nvidia, head the bill on the business side.

Political bigwigs attending include French President Emmanuel Macron, Argentina's Javier Milei, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, and, of course, President Donald Trump.

Yes, you can ski here too

Davos might turn into the center of the business world for a week, but it's still a ski town at its core.

I got to check out the slopes on Sunday. And after a 10-year hiatus from snowboarding, I came out mostly unscathed. (To be honest, that's the real victory.)

Still, there was some business to be done as Cloudflare was holding an event. The tech company actually has a relationship with the US Ski & Snowboard.

It's not just your typical corporate sponsorship, though. Some US Ski Team athletes who attended the event discussed the importance of teaming up with tech companies. The innovation they provide can help them during training, like understanding how to better hit a certain line on the mountain to shave fractions of a second off their runs.

Getting to Davos is half the battle

For a conference full of so many powerful people, it sure ain't easy to get to.

Davos doesn't have an airport, which means some extra commuting (even for billionaires).

The nearest airport for private planes is St. Moritz, but that's still nearly a two-hour drive. (Although there are always helicopters.) For the rest of us, Zurich Airport is a little over two hours by car or three hours by train.

Here's how I managed the trip this year:

Sunday morning: the calm before the storm